February 29/12 15:53 pm - Roger Hammond to Race in Paris to Ancaster

Posted by Editoress on 02/29/12

The Paris to Ancaster Bicycle Race (P2A) organizers have announced that WorldTour Classics specialist Roger Hammond will take part in the 2012 race. P2A will take place on Sunday, April 15th, with more than 2,000 riders expected to take part.

Hammond, 38, finished third in the 2004 edition of Paris-Roubaix and has two additional top-10 finishes in the Queen of the Classics. A former teammate of Lance Armstrong on the Discovery Channel team, he has also finished second in Ghent-Wevelgem, seventh in the Tour of Flanders, and is a two-time British National Road Race Champion. In cyclocross competition, Hammond won the 1992 World Junior Championship, and is an eight-time winner of the British National Cyclocross Championship. Hammond began his professional career with Palmans Colstrop in Belgium, and has since raced at the WorldTour level with T-Mobile, Highroad, Cervelo, and Garmin.

This will be Hammond’s third racing appearance Canada. In 1990, as part of a British schoolboy team, he won the Fonthill Lumber Niagara Grand Prix Junior stage race. In 2003, he represented Britain at the World Road Championships in Hamilton, Ontario, and will now bookend his professional career at Paris to Ancaster on April 15th.

More than 2,000 riders are expected for the 2012 P2A, Canada’s largest mountain bike/cyclocross race. Everybody from weekend warriors to hardcore mountain bike racers, road racers and cyclocross specialists will participate in either the 60 kilometre or 35 kilometre courses, that feature the worst roads, trails, farm tracks, railtrails and fields that organizers can find. Two-time defending men’s champion, Mike Garrigan (Lapierre), has confirmed his entry. And Aaron Schooler (team H&R Block), the 2012 Canadian Cyclocross Championship bronze medalist, from Edmonton, Alberta, will be the challenger from western Canada.

American professional road and cyclocross racer Adam Myerson (Team Mountain Khakis) said this about the 2011 race: “One minute you’re banging through the woods like it’s a mountain bike race or a cyclocross, and the next you’re swapping off in an echelon, like a road race. It’s all the fun things about bike racing in one event.”

The Paris to Ancaster Bicycle Race has taken place for the past 18 years over some of the roughest terrain organizers can find. Combined with unpredictable spring weather and the largest field of riders assembled in Canada, it has become a classic race experience for everyone from average riders to Canadian Olympians.